The Arch Conjuror of England (17 page)

Murphyn's extraordinary allegations against Dee throughout the 1570s and 1580s reveal that he was still fighting the battles over alchemy and other occult knowledge that had swirled around the Catholic plots of the 1560s. Even the incorrigible Prestall reappears. Dee remained a target because he had developed something of a reputation amongst other alchemists. His distant relative Hugh Plat recorded Dee's recipe for a lamp oil suitable for long, gentle alchemical heating, and alchemists passed
around instructions for ‘Mr John Dee his black lute most excellent’, a cement to join alchemical vessels.
³³
Furthermore, during the 1570s the whole issue of transmutation became central to Court gossip because about April 1571, as Dee prepared to depart for Lorraine, William Medley initiated a venture to transmute iron into copper that attracted several of Dee's Court patrons and connections – including Elizabeth, Cecil (newly made Lord Burghley), Leicester, Sir Thomas Smith and Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and eventually the Sidneys, Edward Dyer and Sir Francis Walsingham.

Part of the reason the modern world believes that Elizabeth's Court had little time for alchemy is that in 1698 the Enlightenment historian John Strype dismissed Medley's irrational enthusiasm and broke off his story in 1576, with Medley allegedly languishing in prison for debt, a caricature of the con-artist outsider exploiting gullible courtiers.
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In fact, both Medley and his short-cut method were legitimate. Chemically, his process worked. He proposed making copper – valued for industrial uses, coinage and ordnance, but also an important stage towards the Great Work – by dissolving copper ores in boiling sulphuric acid to make copper sulphate, then throwing in iron to condense the copper from solution by cementation onto the iron. This technique of hydrometallurgy required lower temperatures than smelting, and had been published in Georgius Agricola's
Of Metals
(1556). Manufacturers used it right up to the nineteenth century.
³⁵
Medley successfully demonstrated the process to Gilbert and Smith.

Medley attracted financial backers by describing this cementation as ‘transmuting of iron into copper with vitriol’. He ultimately failed to produce copper economically because the process cost so much, not because it was fraudulent.
³⁶
Despite believing Medley's demonstration, Smith doubted sufficient cheap sulphuric acid could be produced to make the process profitable. Therefore, Medley spent many months searching for ‘earths’ suitable for making acid.

Nor was Medley a low-born outsider. He was a gentleman, and his distant relative, Lady Burghley, had recruited him for ‘daily attendance’ in Burghley's intimate service, where he was ‘bred up’. He served until
Burghley's death in 1598, probably in some alchemical medical capacity, given their shared alchemical interests and Burghley's chronic ill health.
³⁷
Even though Medley's eventual failure to make cheap copper turned Leicester against him, he retained Burghley's confidence.

The conflicting stories by Smith and Medley about what happened next agree on one thing – there was considerable courtly interest in the enterprise.
³⁸
After initial trials that summer at Winchelsea, Medley shifted production to Canford Manor near Poole in Dorset. Having allegedly discovered how to make copper more cheaply without vitriol, he persuaded Gilbert and Smith to lease ore-bearing grounds and production facilities there from Lady Mountjoy for £300 a year.

Medley's ‘alchemical’ production techniques at Canford may explain Dee's surprising venture into copper mining in 1583, an episode only briefly mentioned in his ‘Diary’. Like Medley, Dee possessed descriptions of transmutatory hydrometallurgy in Georgius Agricola's
On Metals
and two copies of Vanoccio Biringuccio's
Pyrotechnics
.
³⁹
Dee also possessed Lazarus Ercker's
Mineworks
(1574), whose title page showed the occult rays emanating from JHWH, the Name of God, ‘seeding’ the earth with diverse metals that grew under occult stellar influences. Lazarus Ercker's book vividly described metallurgical techniques for processing these divine gifts. It described the transmutation of iron into copper in the presence of vitriol as an essential part of ‘the Great Work’.
⁴⁰

Dee certainly knew how metalworkers purified their ores with acids, but he had no direct experience of mining.
⁴¹
Therefore, after leasing a Devonshire copper mine, on 10 July 1583 he hired ‘Thomas Hoke of Cranford [
sic
]’ to work with him, an identification that suggests Dee's familiarity with that remote Dorset manor. The Hoke family were native to Canford. Thomas probably had experience in working Lord Mountjoy's mines, though he departed within two weeks, perhaps unable to perform the transmutation process that chiefly interested Dee.
⁴²

Medley informed Burghley that since he began at Canford in September 1571 he had successfully made ‘nature ripe by art’, a euphemism for alchemy. He repaid his investors partly from money supplied by his friend Thomas Curtess, of whom more anon. Sir Thomas Smith and Sir
Humphrey Gilbert then revealed that Elizabeth had stayed their patent for ‘The Society of the New Art’, which included Burghley and Leicester but excluded Medley.
⁴³
Unprotected by a legal monopoly, Medley therefore refused to make copper at Canford ‘for fear my Lord Mountjoy [will] get knowledge of the secrets thereof’, which he and his friends ‘go very indirectly about’. Mountjoy was soon boiling dissolved copper ores with iron to ‘transmute’ the iron into copper.
⁴⁴
Burghley promised to persuade Elizabeth to include Medley in the patent and tried to extend their lease from Mountjoy. When he failed, Medley left Canford and washed his hands of Gilbert, offering to join Burghley and Leicester under a new patent, promising a hundred tons of perfect copper a year.
⁴⁵
Medley also curried favour with Dee's alchemical patrons, the Sidneys.
⁴⁶

Sir Thomas Smith reveals Elizabeth's close personal interest in their enterprise. He assured Medley that his inclusion in the patent had been agreed ‘both by her majesty and my lords’.
⁴⁷
Elizabeth implicitly trusted Medley's promises, not only taking her usual cut from the deal but proposing that after twenty years she could ‘enjoy or occupy the said new art, by her self’, an arrangement the investors refused.
⁴⁸

However, appointed ambassador to the French Court in late December 1571, Smith soon fumed impotently from France that Medley ‘doth as Geber, Ripley and the other alchemists do, that leadeth a man from this to that and so through so many gates that at the last they come through never a one right, and in fine, find nothing’. On the other hand, Smith's alchemical learning, his many distillations and Medley's demonstration persuaded him, he assured Richard Eden, that ‘that art’ could produce ‘most strange, wondrous and incredible things’.
⁴⁹
Smith sent home part of a treatise by the medieval alchemist Raymond Lull, ‘worth the weight of pure gold’. He ordered his assistant in England to follow two Lullian experiments and celebrated their success in bringing alchemical mercury and sulphur to one step before the elixir.
⁵⁰
Yet when Smith returned to England in August 1572 he found Gilbert departed to the Netherlands war, Medley gone and Burghley now partnered with Leicester in a 'new society’, which left him saddled with debts and rent obligations to Lady Mountjoy.
⁵¹

We might assume this marked the end of Medley's schemes, but that would underestimate the Court's belief in his alchemical abilities. By late 1572 he had commenced working on the copper deposits at Parys Mountain, Anglesey, where in 1574 he demonstrated a new method, bankrolled by Sir Henry Sidney and Sir John Wynn of Gwydir. Medley boiled powdered ‘iron’ in local mineral waters emerging from copper deposits, producing ‘crocus’ of copper that tested about 10 per cent pure. This created a sensation, and ‘part was sent to the Lo[rds] of the Council that were partners in the work, part to others of the nobility; and every gentleman of quality there present had part to carry in his pocket’. Medley even persuaded Burghley, Leicester and Walsingham to make the arduous journey to Anglesey, although doubts remained whether the process could turn a profit.
⁵²
Emboldened by his success, in October 1574 Medley demanded funding from Burghley and Leicester for the undertaking in Anglesey, offering Sidney's testimonial and a ‘plat’ or design of the work.
⁵³

As usual when confronted with investment proposals, Burghley sought expert advice.
⁵⁴
William Humphrey, Warden of the Mint, interviewed Medley, observed his procedure, and assayed his product. Humphrey initially confessed himself mystified that Medley could produce more weight of copper than the iron he started with, but soon reached a startling conclusion.
⁵⁵
God's providence, Humphrey reported, had blessed England with Medley's ‘honourable and marvelous’ work. It should be secretly rewarded, while publicly left ‘in discredit with the world as now it is’.
⁵⁶
This suggests that some contemporary criticisms of alchemy should be taken with a large pinch of salt, because successful experiments could become a state secret. Smith now hinted that Burghley and Leicester should stump up some cash, if they expected to share the profits.
⁵⁷

Burghley and Leicester's patent dated 14 February 1575 included Medley.
⁵⁸
Yet he still delayed, demanding money upfront, angering Smith because Medley's Anglesey demonstration had made the technique common knowledge, and ‘My L[ord] Mountjoy hath gotten one of Mr Medleys chief workmen to him’.
⁵⁹
Medley next turns up as Leicester's prisoner in the Wood Street Counter on 1 September 1576 – but not for
debt as Strype assumed. In fact, rival alchemists had raised questions about Medley's loyalty, especially to Leicester. These attacks parallel the assaults on Dee in several respects. Medley's failure to meet Leicester's expectations of returns on his investment left him vulnerable to criticism from two surprising sources – his erstwhile friend Thomas Curtess and John Prestall.

Dee's rival Prestall kept bobbing up like a cork on the turbulent waters of Elizabethan politics, because his occult knowledge, plus his willingness to spy on his fellow Catholics, made him especially useful. Prestall had been indicted again in 1571 for having ‘conspired, compassed and imagined the death of the Queen’ by sorcery in 1570.
⁶⁰
He later claimed that Philip II, who patronised alchemists, appointed him to his Council, and that he made alchemical wildfire for use against the English navy.
⁶¹
Yet despite Prestall's public threats to kill Burghley and Elizabeth by magic, he maintained a secret correspondence with the former and was allowed to return to England in late 1572.
⁶²
Despite his treason the Privy Council released him under large bonds for good behaviour in July 1574, much to the disgust of that loyal Protestant William Harrison.
⁶³

Prestall denigrated Medley's loyalty and abilities in order to emphasise his own alchemical expertise. Curtess tried to distance himself from Medley's fall by turning against him. This seemed obvious to Medley's lone defender, Dee's patron and Leicester's sister, Mary Dudley Sidney, who maintained close contact with Medley. Burghley warned her off, but Lady Sidney insisted on defending Medley against ‘continual malicious prosecuting’ by men guilty of ‘so many false and traitorous crimes to their prince, country and friends’. They had even tried ‘to bring my name in with his in all these brabbles’. Evidently Prestall's gang had extended their campaign against Dee to Medley and Lady Sidney, using methods bitterly familiar to Dee since the 1560s.

For years Medley's accusers, just as they spread tales about Dee around Court, had brought Lady Sidney groundless tales about his misdemeanours against her. She believed that Curtess and Prestall's false accusations had persuaded Leicester to imprison Medley against his better judgement. They had also tried to blacken Medley's reputation with Burghley.
She reminded Burghley that while Medley dutifully submitted himself, ‘his accusers be so monstrous, vile and wicked themselves, and would do others, and his betters, no less hurt if they could’.
⁶⁴
Prestall's accusations against Medley entailed forged letters, the same method that Vincent Murphyn had used against Dee. Leicester received a letter apparently signed by Thomas Wotton, one of his Devonshire clients and Medley's cousin, accusing Medley of infamous but unspecified words and deeds. Leicester sensibly checked with Wotton, who protested that he had not written the letter and could not imagine Medley doing things that ‘I have a long time much disliked’.
⁶⁵
We shall see how Dee eventually turned the tables on Murphyn and Prestall and helped Medley's rehabilitation.

Medley's copper transmutation enterprise dissolved not because investors doubted his industrial alchemy but because in 1581 Joachim Gans, an experienced German industrial alchemist, began producing cheaper copper at the Mines Royal in Cumberland. His method resembled Agricola's and Medley's, whereby powdered ‘right Iron ore, being by roasting, brought into the perfection of Iron, is by the water and strength of vitriol converted into copper’.
⁶⁶
The subsequent improvement in investment returns from the Mines Royal, thanks to what everyone believed was an alchemical process, removed the incentive to invest in Medley's schemes.

Yet Medley remained Burghley's trusted servant, in close attendance on his lord.
⁶⁷
Through Burghley's patronage Medley would acquire rich leases in the vacant diocese of Ely.
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He became the Queen's surveyor there by 1590 and ultimately Keeper of the imprisoned Catholic priests at Wisbech Castle.
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Medley's imprisonment in 1576 demonstrates the importance for Dee and other occult philosophers of meeting their patrons’ expectations. Failure to do so left them vulnerable to the backbiting of courtly politics and jealous rivals. Success gave them leverage against those rivals. We can see this process most clearly in the dramatic revisions made to Foxe's account of Dee in the 1576 edition of
Acts and Monuments
. Foxe essentially abandoned Murphyn's attacks on the ‘Arch-Conjuror’ and accepted Dee's version of events. He did so because at that date Dee was gaining kudos by writing advice about the British Empire that suited Leicester's political agenda.